NEW YORK — One playoff victory, not to mention an 18-6 finish to the regular season, was enough to earn Mike Woodson some long-term job security. As expected, the Knicks signed Woodson to a multi-year contract Friday, apparently never showing any interest whatsoever in Phil Jackson, a member of their last title-winning team in 1973 who has won an NBA record 11 championships as a head coach. Jackson likely would have been interested, as you can discern from reading this Mark Heisler
Chris Sheridan chatted online with readers today about Team USA, the NBA playoffs, Jerry Sloan, Pau Gasol, Jim Dolan, Phil Jackson and a host of other topics. He will be hosting another live chat Friday to discuss the results of Game 6 of the Miami-Indiana series and Game 7 of the Celtics-Sixers series. Here is a transcript of Thursday’s chat. 10:35 Good morning, all. I will be live chatting NBA and anything else you want to talk about beginning at noon, EDT. You can
// There is an unemployed coach out there with 11 championship rings who has a soft spot in his heart for the New York Knicks and Madison Square Garden. And at the very least, the Knicks and their owner, Jim Dolan, owe it to their fans to pick up the phone and make an exploratory call to Phil Jackson’s representatives to ask if he’d be interested in taking the job. SheridanHoops.com columnist Mark Heisler sat down for lunch with Jackson a couple
LOS ANGELES – Still crazy after all these years…. There was a time when the Lakers were just a good NBA team, like their romantic underdogs in the ‘60s with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, and the Showtime teams that threw off the Celtics’ dominance in the ‘80s. Then came Shaq, Kobe and, a few years later, Phil, and nothing was the same for years…. Besides the feud that broke up their dynasty with three titles when Shaq was shipped to Miami as
LOS ANGELES — I didn’t set out to major in Kobe Bryant, having long since graduated when he showed up here at 17. Things just led that way. I covered his father, Joe, whom he called Jellybean, as a 76ers rookie in the 1970s. I knew the family from Baker League games, where I met Joe’s gregarious father, Big Joe. After not having seen Joe for decades, I ran into him at the 1995 Adidas camp at Fairleigh Dickinson where his
Dwight Howard’s decision to stay another season didn’t turn out to be such good news for the Magic, after all? Gosh, who’d have thunk it? Before zeroing in on the Magic, I should note, in fairness, it’s hardly the NBA’s only dysfunctional organization. Actually, as a former GM noted the other day, dysfunction is the rule, not the exception. Take the Lakers. They’ve been as sharp as anyone despite a sibling rivalry between Jim and Jeannie Buss, with father Jerry supporting Jim and former coach
NEWS: Suns’ forward, Grant Hill, underwent a successful procedure to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee. The Cavaliers have signed guard Lester Hudson to a 10-day contract. Celtics’ center, Jermaine O’Neal, underwent season ending surgery on his left wrist. NOTES: Los Angeles Clippers’ forward, Reggie Evans, was fined $25,00o for making an obscene gesture. RUMORS: The whispers, though, have already begun to spread on the coaching grapevine that Nate McMillan will emerge as a prime candidate to replace Van Gundy if this is it for SVG
Checking back in on that Battle for L.A. we were telling you about…. As in, “What battle?” The Lakers are still the Lakers, more or less, even if we still don’t know what they’ll wind up as, more or less. The Clips are no longer the Clippers, even if Clippers have always gone back to being the Clippers with mass desertions, heads rolling, lawsuits, etc. For the moment, the air has gone out of the Clips’ euphoric breakout—remember Lob City?–even with the team on